


For Those Below

by Lexigent



Category: Henry V (1989), Henry V - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:38:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6093373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/pseuds/Lexigent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last production I saw of this play, it really struck me how Henry goes from the "Upon the king" speech to the St. Crispin's Day speech, and I wondered what was going on in his mind in between those two scenes. Here's one possible explanation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Those Below

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).



> For the prompt "In foreign fields." Title taken from the Mumford & Sons song.
> 
> The piece owes much to both the recent RSC production, which was really powerful with a Henry who's still a small, frightened child at heart, and Kenneth Branagh's film version, which makes the king's bisexuality, especially his relationship with Scroop, explicit. I took aspects of both readings for this version of Henry.

Henry knelt down on the muddy field, which immediately swallowed up his toes and kneecaps as though it were trying to suck him into the ground before his time.

He was kneeling before God - the only entity before which a king should kneel. He felt anything but kingly in this moment, with the soldier's gauge in his belt. He started praying because it was the only thing he could think of to reasonably do at this point. His prayers likely fell on deaf ears; he was a sinner, would always be. He stopped pleasding with God eventually, eyes shiny and wet and not knowing if this had made him feel better or worse.

He longed for home, for the familiar warmth and filth of the Eastcheap taverns, for the crowded noise of London, for rushes under his feet. He hung his head and closed his eyes. Images floated into his mind's eye: 

Doll Tearsheet, on top of him in one of the beds in the upstairs rooms of the Boar's Head. 

His hand lost in the ginger wildness that was Ned Poins' hair, Ned asleep against his chest during one of their rare mornings together in the rooms he'd taken near Eastcheap. 

Jack Falstaff, always larger than life, face burning with sack and brimfull of tall tales, with Hal and Ned by his knees on either side of him, like boys listening with rapt attention to a fairy story.

Henry Scroop, finally and most painfully of all, a memory he had tried to get out of his mind since he'd left for France. But it would not be suppressed so easily. In his stronger moments, Henry could think of what he'd had with Ned as the fancy of youth, a toy in blood, but Henry Scroop had been a very different animal indeed. His uncle Exeter had known about the nature of their relationship - indeed, Henry surmised, more at court might have known but been wise enough to keep their own counsel.

The realisation was expected, but that did not make it less of a sting: Not one of the men who had been friends to him were left now, either because they had died one way or another, or because they were not in a position to be his friends now.

But then, no one was, no one could be. What Scroop had done, another might do just as easily next year if Henry let anyone into his affections again.

And yet, he thought, just because it was this way for him, that didn't mean friendship itself had died. It didn't mean that there weren't a thousand places in England like the Boar's Head, not a thousand women and children anxious for their husbands and sons, a thousand men who weren't here but who had friends among the king's company.

He could not pretend to know each particular soldier's or general's reasons for being here, now, on the eve of a battle that was likely, indeed seemed ordained, to leave them dead or broken and humiliated. He could not make up reasons for them to fight that they wouldn't see through if he didn't believe them himself in his heart. Yet, speak to them he must, in the morning, if only to give them thanks for their service and company, for their loyalty in being here, no matter what other reasons they had.

The wind gusted rain across him and he shivered. This field had become their world, a world made of mud and rain and misery, but they must not forget that there were yet nobility and grace and friendship in the world, here and elsewhere; that there were memories of friends and families that his men would fight and even die for.

He roused himself to standing. There were words he could say to them; he could speak to them of things precious to them, things he now valued and understood as only one who has lost them can. There was a world elsewhere, and he must remind his men of it. 

He wiped his face and his glove left a smear of mud across it. He grimaced, then laughed, brought to the brink of hysteria by the absurdity of it.

He made his way back to his tent. Once there, he picked up quill and paper and hastily scribbled down some of the thoughts he'd had on the way, lest they escape him before daybreak. Even after he had calmed his whirling mind in this way, sleep seemed unattainable, though he srumised he might have slept an hour or two when the day rose over the field, bleak and inexorable.

He folded the paper and, after overlooking it, secured it against his heart. They must all face the day, and he was now resolved to do it with as good a grace as he could muster. For all that they likely would not survive it, for all that the men likely knew this, they deserved thanks and honour that only a king could give.

He bit his lip and stepped out of the tent, ready.


End file.
